In researching the book, Leadership Agility, I discovered that “creative agility” is a key aspect of agile leadership. Leaders with creative agility use creative thinking to transform complex, novel problems into intended results. One of the capacities that underlies this kind of agility is “connective awareness,” the ability to make meaningful connections between seemingly disparate ideas and feelings.

Here’s a research study that provides some valuable insight into the connection between ambivalent feelings and creative thinking. (Ambivalence is a state in which you have conflicting feelings about the same thing and therefore feel pulled in different directions).

Assistant Professor Christina Ting Fong at the University of Washington divided about 100 students into four groups. Each group was assigned a particular emotion (happy, sad, neutral, or ambivalent). Students were asked to write about a life event in which their group’s emotion was predominant. After testing students to make sure the story-writing task caused them to experience the designated emotion, Fong had them take the Remote Associates Test, a commonly used measure of creativity (essentially a measure of “connective awareness”). The result? The “ambivalent” group was the most creative.

Fong’s conclusion was that complex emotions may lead to the kind of complex thinking needed for creative problem solving. This finding is consistent with our own finding that a leader’s “connective awareness” of feelings and their “connective awareness” of ideas and are interrelated.

]]>https://changewise.biz/?feed=rss2&p=31600The Power of Integrative Thinkinghttps://changewise.biz/?p=3148
https://changewise.biz/?p=3148#respondMon, 24 Jul 2017 15:59:09 +0000https://changewise.biz/?p=3148In her classic book, The Change Masters, Harvard Business School Professor, Rosabeth Kanter, found that the key difference between truly innovative change leaders and those who focused only on incremental change came down to two different mindsets. The innovative leaders – those who succeeded in leading change projects that crossed boundaries and addressed formerly unseen organizational opportunities – had an “integrative” mindset. Those who focused only on incremental improvements had what she called a “segmentalist” mindset. The same was true for companies. More innovative companies have organizational cultures that are more supportive of integrative thinking and leadership.

Whereas “segmentalist” leaders are tactical and focus on making incremental changes within the boundaries of their authority, integrative thinkers are more strategic, see how issues are connected, and are more skilled in leading cross-functional change initiatives.

Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management in Toronto and author of The Opposable Mind – another leadership researcher through the years – arrived at a similar conclusion: The secret to effective leadership can’t be found simply in how leaders behave. The success of outstanding leaders, he says, lies in the fact that they are “integrative thinkers.” He contrasts these leaders with “conventional thinkers,” whose thought processes match those that Kanter called “segmentalist.”

The extensive research I conducted, captured in the rich stories in Leadership Agility, builds on these findings. My focus was on what differentiates leaders who are highly effective in leading under conditions of accelerating change and increasing interdependence. However, while Kanter and Martin each sorted their findings into one of two classifications, I found a spectrum of stages through which leaders develop more integrative thinking – and related capacities. These stages are called “levels of leadership agility.”

At the conventional/segmentalist end of the Leadership Agility spectrum is the Expert level of agility. Leaders’ thinking then becomes more integrative with each new stage (Achiever and then Catalyst). The thought process of Achiever-level leaders matches what Kanter and Martin both call “integrative thinking.” At the Catalyst level, which we found to be the most effective in today’s turbulent environment, leaders develop an even more robust capacity for integrative thinking.

[Integrative thinking isn’t the only capacity needed for highly effective leadership in today’s world. To name just one, another essential capacity that evolves in stages is stakeholder agility, the ability to put oneself accurately and empathetically in the “shoes” of one’s stakeholders and then to develop increased stakeholder alignment for important initiatives. For more about the capacities that develop at different levels of leadership agility, see the Leadership Agility white paper].

At ChangeWise, we’ve used this framework of agility levels to design assessments, leadership workshops, and coaching and consulting services that help leaders use more integrative thinking to achieve the needed business results. (See client stories and results).

Bill Joiner is co-author of the award-winning book, Leadership Agility. He is CEO, senior consultant, and resident thought leader at ChangeWise, a firm with international reach that specializes in leadership consulting, coaching and training; team development; and organizational change consulting.

Follow Bill Joiner on Twitter – @agileleader

]]>https://changewise.biz/?feed=rss2&p=31480How to Shift from Blame to Learninghttps://changewise.biz/?p=3142
https://changewise.biz/?p=3142#respondWed, 05 Jul 2017 20:55:05 +0000https://changewise.biz/?p=3142When things don’t go well in organizational life, it is ever so easy to react by blaming others.

For example, we may have a difficult conversation with a co-worker who seems, again, to dismiss our point of view. We wind up feeling “unheard,” frustrated, and possibly even insulted. We react (inwardly, if not outwardly) by blaming the other person. Or, we may blame managers at “lower” levels for acting in ways that are not in the best interest of the larger organization. Or, we may blame top management for lack of strategic clarity, for keeping us in the dark, or for the fact that we feel “ “jerked around” due to rapid shifts in direction. The possibilities are endless.

What is blame, and what does it do for us? What problems does it create? Are there any truly viable alternatives? If so, how do we shift from blame to something more productive?

What is blame?

When we look at it, we see that blame usually arises in reaction to a distinctively uncomfortable feeling. Blame is directed at another person or group, whom we see as the cause of this bad feeling.

The emotional energy of blame, if expressed, takes the form of psychological punishment. There are various ways to express blame, from direct confrontation to passive-aggressive behavior like indirect barbs or malicious gossip. Or, perhaps out of fear or because we don’t want to cause further harm, we might withdraw and keep our feelings to ourselves. But withdrawal can also be a passive way to punish others, especially in close relationships.

Regardless of how blame manifests in our behavior, it also takes root in our mind. Along with the feeling that the other person is to blame for what happened and how we feel, we also label them with certain attitudes and characteristics. In the previous examples, we might conclude that our colleague is close-minded, that “lower level” managers are self-centered, or that upper management is clueless about their impact on the organization. When we allow these labels to solidify, our emotional reaction of blame can solidify as well.

What blame does for us

What does the reaction of blaming others do for us? What problems does it create? When we’re caught up in this reaction, we typically feel it is justified by the circumstances. We feel that blaming the other is necessary, because it correctly assigns responsibility for what went wrong, and it mobilizes us to take action to protect ourselves or confront the person or group that caused the problem.

Blaming others can also be a way to avoid blaming ourselves. For example, after a difficult, uncomfortable conversation with a co-worker, we may have a tendency to blame ourselves for what went wrong. Because blame is a punishing energy, self-blame can compound the initial bad feeling to a point that feels intolerable. Blaming others provides an escape valve for this bad feeling, directing the punishing energy of blame away from ourselves and toward others.

The drawbacks of blame

“How to shift from blame to learning,” the title of this article, implies that, whatever blame may do for us, it has significant drawbacks. But isn’t blame a “natural” thing that we all feel, at least from time to time? When others cause problems, shouldn’t they feel bad about that? Shouldn’t they be blamed? And, really, shouldn’t the same apply to ourselves when we do something wrong?

To answer these questions, we need to look further into blame, its consequences, and its alternatives. The drawbacks of blame are practical in nature. Blame makes us less effective and inhibits the possibility of real learning and change, both in others and in ourselves.

Wrapped into the blame reaction is a set of unexamined assumptions that make us less effective in getting the results we want. One assumption is that, if we can get the other person to see that they are at fault and make them feel guilty (blame themselves for what they did), they will change and stop doing what made us feel bad.

But how often is this the result we get when we blame others? If what we want is for the other person to change, we need to face the fact that blaming others rarely works to accomplish this end. If it does produce a change, it’s likely to be unsustainable, because it will be based on fear (of being further blamed) rather than genuine commitment. Blame and fear actually inhibit real learning and development.

Another assumption we often make when we lay the blame on others is that we bear little or no responsibility for what happened and how we wound up feeling. Yet there is always an “outside chance” that we ourselves have contributed – through our assumptions, emotional reactions, and behavior – to the bad situation we experienced. Putting all the blame on others implies that, unlike other people, we don’t really need to change, or that we can only change if others change first. This blocks learning and development in another way.

Blaming yourself for something that didn’t turn out the way you wanted is equally unproductive. Self-blame, especially when done repeatedly, creates a residual feeling of failure, defensiveness, and depression. These feelings get in the way of genuinely taking responsibility for our part in what went wrong and for finding new ways to deal with similar situations in the future.

What can we do instead?

If blame has these drawbacks, is there a constructive alternative that actually facilitates real learning and change? I call this alternative “shifting from blame to learning.” This orientation acknowledges that other people contribute to interpersonal and organizational problems. In fact, it assumes there will alwaysbe people who will spark negative feelings and make it difficult to achieve the results you want. Yet it is also based on the realization that the only behaviors, emotional reactions and assumptions over which you have any direct control are your own.

Therefore, the central focus of a learning orientation is on yourself and what you can do differently. After taking a really good look at yourself, you can then think through what you can do differently that will have a realistic shot at influencing others to learn and change.

As you might guess, shifting from blame to learning is easier said than done. So how to do we do it? An important starting point is to reframe the meaning of “self-responsibility” and “self-acceptance.” In my research on the relationship between “stages of ego development” and “levels of leadership agility” (seeLeadership Agility), I found important differences in how leaders understand and apply these concepts in their own lives. A key shift takes place in developing from the Achiever stage to the Catalyst stage. (Only about 10% of today’s managers have developed to the Catalyst stage or beyond).

When Achiever-stage leaders feel they have done something wrong (that is, inconsistent with their self-chosen values), they blame themselves and feel guilty. Guilt, they feel, gives them the motivation to get back on track. What are not seen at this stage are the counter-productive effects of self-blame and guilt – how these feelings can produce internal defensiveness and block awareness of behaviors, emotions, and assumptions we would prefer not to “own” as part of ourselves. And how we blame others so we can avoid feeling guilty ourselves.

As leaders develop into the Catalyst stage, they begin to see how self-blame and guilt can block self-awareness, learning and change. These leaders get curious about their own areas of defensiveness and about formerly unnoticed assumptions, feelings, and behaviors.

Catalyst leaders begin to replace self-blame with “self-responsibility” grounded in “self-acceptance.” This more intentional commitment to self-acceptance does notmean that they make excuses for their mistakes or think only positive thoughts about what they’ve done. It means that, within themselves, they are committed to acknowledging reactions, assumptions, and behaviors that are limiting or counter-productive. By seeing these seemingly “out of character” parts of themselves with curiosity rather than self-blame, they are able to more fully take responsibility for them in a way that’s more complete and that leads more reliably to sustainable change.

Through the exercise of this kind of self-acceptance, taking responsibility for our own contributions to problematic situations can be decoupled from blame. We discover that the desire to change and develop is already there, inside us, and that we don’t need blame and guilt as motivations to change. We find, in fact, that by exercising the kind of self-acceptance and self-responsibility embodied by Catalyst leaders, we feel better about ourselves and can therefore respond in less defensive and more productive ways when others point the finger of blame our way.

All this might sound good in concept, but how do we actually make this shift from blame to learning in real life? Adopting a learning orientation means being alert for times when a blame reaction takes over our consciousness. It also means stepping back from that reaction to examine what happened and consider our options from a perspective of curiosity about ourselves and our interactions with others. It means developing, through repeated practice, a capacity for self-reflection that leaves our positive self-esteem intact. It means increasingly taking responsibility for what we do to create the world we live in.

Properly applied, a learning orientation does not take energy away from addressing issues that need to be addressed with others. In fact, it better prepares and empowers us to address these issues. It begins, however, by realizing that the most powerful leverage point for change in your life is yourself – the way you perceive events and the way you interact with others. It means asking yourself, Given what’s truly under my control, what can I do differently to bring about the results I desire?”

Shifting from blame to learning is a developmental journey that is often “two steps forward, one step backward.” It takes time, practice, and patience. We can be inspired along the way by reading about those relatively rare leaders at the Catalyst level of leadership agility and beyond, who are the real pioneers on this journey.

A version of this article is incorporated into ChangeWise workshops on “Pivotal Conversations” – advanced interpersonal mindsets and skill-sets for important conversations where parties need to resolve differing views and priorities.

Bill Joiner is co-author of the award-winning book, Leadership Agility. He is CEO, resident thought leader, and a senior consultant at ChangeWise, a firm with international reach that specializes in leadership consulting, coaching and training; team development; and organizational change consulting.

Contact Bill directly at bj@changewise.biz

Follow Bill Joiner on Twitter – @agileleader

]]>https://changewise.biz/?feed=rss2&p=31420Leadership Agility and “Vertical Development”https://changewise.biz/?p=3130
https://changewise.biz/?p=3130#respondTue, 13 Jun 2017 02:10:04 +0000https://changewise.biz/?p=3130People who begin to delve into the book, Leadership Agility, are often curious about its relationship to stages of personal development (what some are now calling “vertical” development). Especially the earlier work that Bill Torbert did on the links between developmental stages and leadership. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, when Torbert did most of this work on this topic, he was virtually the lone pioneer in exploring these connections.

One of the key influences on Torbert’s work is a framework of stages of “ego development” created by the late Jane Loevinger and her associates. Her work is one of the primary contributions to a field called “stage development psychology” (Bob Kegan and a number of others have also made important contributions). Early work by Jean Piaget on stages of childhood stages later blossomed into increasingly robust research on stages of adult development. (These are not age-related phases, but stages of increasing cognitive complexity and emotional intelligence).

The research conducted in this field has steadily gained wider interest, especially for the way it illuminates adult development, partly because of its incorporation into the Integral perspective of Ken Wilber. This field of research shows that human beings develop through a set of well-defined developmental stages. Loevinger, above all, was a pioneer in assessing developmental stages. Over the years, starting in the 1950s, she created and honed the “Washington University Sentence Completion Test” (WUSCT, or simply SCT) and developed an extensive, highly detailed scoring manual. Together, the SCT and Loevinger’s scoring manual made it possible, using a labor-intensive process that requires specially trained scorers, to assess a person’s stage of ego development with a fair degree of accuracy. Though I dislike using the term “test” for this assessment, it is one of the best stage development assessments out there. This methodology has been picked up and further developed by Susanne Cook-Greuter.

The research Torbert conducted and supervised while a professor at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College used the SCT and found that, statistically, there is a correlation between a leader’s stage of ego development and their effectiveness in carrying out certain leadership tasks. Torbert has used the term “action logic” to refer to the frame of mind underlying each stage, suggesting that, when a leader assessed at a particular stage takes action, the frame of mind underlying that stage governs their behavior.

The 5 years of research that went into writing Leadership Agility looked closely at Torbert’s research and that of a number of others, but it also included an extensive amount of original qualitative research. In this post, I won’t attempt to go through all the points where I was able to confirm Torbert’s conception of stages and corresponding leadership behaviors, or the points where I came to differing or more nuanced conclusions. However, I can say that this in-depth research allowed me to describe in a much more detailed and systematic way both the mental and emotional capacities that emerge at each stage and the leadership behaviors that can be observed when these capacities are translated into action.

Another key finding of the Leadership Agility research is that stage of development is a necessary but not always sufficient condition for leadership behavior that is consistent with that stage. Therefore, rather than use a single term like “action logic” to refer to a leader’s stage and how they take action (which would imply that behavior always matches stage), I’ve stressed the need to look at stage (underlying capacities) and leadership behavior as distinct (though related) factors. For example, while many leaders “act their stage,” a significant number need more practice and skill development to put their stage-related capacities fully into action. When a leader congruently enacts their stage-based cognitive and emotional capacities, I say that they are operating at the “level of leadership agility” that corresponds to that stage.

The methodology for assessing agility level is the Leadership Agility 360, a tool I developed in collaboration with Cambria Consulting, a firm with deep experience and expertise in assessment methodologies. This instrument is also much more contextual than traditional 360s. That is, it can identify how a leader’s agility level may vary in different “action arenas,” specifically leading organizational change, leading teams, and pivotal conversations.

Bill Joineris co-author of the award-winning book,Leadership Agility. He is CEO and a Principal Consultant atChangeWise, a long-established firm with international reach that specializes in leadership consulting, coaching and training; team development; and organizational change consulting.

Follow Bill Joiner on Twitter – @leaderagility

]]>https://changewise.biz/?feed=rss2&p=31300How to use the Leadership Agility Compasshttps://changewise.biz/?p=3105
https://changewise.biz/?p=3105#commentsTue, 30 May 2017 19:48:09 +0000https://changewise.biz/?p=3105The Leadership Agility Compass is a graphic tool developed by ChangeWise, that emerged from the 5 years of intensive research and writing underlying the book, Leadership Agility. When you know how to use it, it’s a tool that can make any leadership initiative you undertake more effective.

Our research on Leadership Agility found that the most effective leaders we studied invest time and attention in four key “territories.” These four territories are the same, regardless of whether an initiative involves leading organizational change, improving team performance, or engaging in pivotal conversations.

The four interrelated territories that are integral to any of these initiatives are:

The larger systemic context surrounding your initiative.

Your initiative’s key stakeholders.

The specific problems and opportunities your initiative must address for it to be successful.

Yourself as a leader.

Each point on the Leadership Agility Compass points to one of these territories, serving as a reminder to attend fully to all four. The Compass points themselves represent the four types of leadership agility you need to exercise in attending to these territories. The underlying dynamic of agility is the same for all four types: You step back from what you’re focused on, gain a wider perspective, and then move to put the key insights from this wider view into action. What is different about the four types of agility is that they each attend to different territories.

Context-setting agility: Think of a specific real-life initiative you are planning or are already undertaking. Focus your mind on the doing of this initiative. Now, step back and let the larger strategic context of your initiative come into view. As you scan this larger environment, you recognize and anticipate changing circumstances, you decide which initiatives are most worth your time and effort – and why, and you clarify the outcomes you want each initiative to achieve.

Stakeholder agility: Now, when you step back from focusing on your initiative, bring to mind its key stakeholders. These are the people and groups who will be impacted by your initiative and whose support you need for your initiative to be successful. As you step back and survey this territory, you can identify your stakeholders, then put yourself in their shoes: How do they view and feel about your initiative? To what extent are they aligned with what you want to do? To the extent that you are not aligned, how can you engage with them in ways that might lead to more optimal alignment?

Creative agility: Another territory is made up of the specific issues your initiative needs to address. Creative agility starts with stepping back and identifying what these key issues are and how they are related. It also involves diagnosing the underlying root causes of these issues, and developing creative solutions. Why creative solutions? Due to the nature of today’s turbulent business environment, the problems that need to be addressed tend to be novel and non-routine and to cross organizational boundaries. Research has shown what you already probably know: The best solutions to these “ill-structured” problems come when we engage our capacity for creative thinking.

Self-leadership agility: The fourth territory is, frankly, the most frequently overlooked. There is a saying: “Wherever you go, there you are.” You yourself are at the heart of everything you do as a leader. You activate your self-leadership agility when – before, during, and after an initiative you lead – you step back and reflect on yourself. Stepping back repeatedly in this way allows you to accelerate your own leadership development by clarifying your strengths and areas where you want to improve, proactively finding opportunities to stretch and grow as a leader, and reflecting your experiences as you continue to experiment toward higher levels of effectiveness.

Try it out and see what happens.

The Leadership Agility Compass is also at the heart of the innovative “Leadership Agility 360″ feedback instrument. It is also at the core of the Leadership Agility Change Lab, where leaders simultaneously advance their own change projects while increasing their agility as leaders.

If you are interested in leadership coaching or consulting that makes use of the Leadership Agility Compass and other practical insights from the ChangeWise research on leadership agility, contact me at bj@changewise.biz

Bill Joineris co-author of the award-winning book,Leadership Agility. He is CEO and a Principal Consultant atChangeWise, a firm with international reach that specializes in leadership consulting, coaching and training; team development; and organizational change consulting.

Follow Bill Joiner on Twitter – @agileleader

]]>https://changewise.biz/?feed=rss2&p=31051Perspective-Taking as a Leadership Practicehttps://changewise.biz/?p=3096
https://changewise.biz/?p=3096#respondWed, 24 May 2017 16:53:29 +0000https://changewise.biz/?p=3096Some leadership coaches help their clients expand their “perspective taking” ability, even if they don’t use this term. “Perspective taking” is linked to a body of research – now stretching back many decades – called “stage development psychology” (think Jean Piaget, Jane Loevinger, Bob Kegan). This field is getting increasing attention from coaches and leadership development professionals, sometimes under the rubric of “vertical development.” The most influential pioneer in applying stage development to leadership was Bill Torbert, formerly at Boston College. Leadership Agility, the book I co-authored, synthesizes and builds on the findings of all these trailblazers, adding additional insights from a 5-year research project conducted while writing the book.

Stages of development in perspective-taking capacity

“Perspective taking” is viewing a situation from another person’s (or group’s) point of view. Research has established that perspective-taking develops through a sequence of predictable stages. For example, it’s not until around age 6 that we begin to realize that others experience objects from a different physical perspective than we do. It’s not until pre-adolescence that it dawns on us that others might see us differently than we do, which is one reason for the pronounced self-consciousness felt in early adolescence.

Contrary to what was once believed, additional stages of growth are open to us in adulthood. If our perspective-taking capacity continues to develop, we move beyond snap judgments about what others are thinking, toward a deeper, more complex and appreciative understanding of their perspectives, even those that may differ markedly from our own. Yet many people plateau at an early adulthood stage, not because of genetic programming, but because of a combination of interest and circumstance. Most institutions, including the great majority of business corporations, are not geared to supporting adults through the full spectrum development.

Expert and Achiever stage perspective-taking

Perspective-taking is central to effective leadership, though not all leaders recognize this. According to our research, roughly 45% of managers are currently at the Expert stage of development, a stage that most often emerges around the end of high school or the early years of college. At this stage a manager’s mindset about leadership tends to be that, if you lead by using your authority and expertise, others should follow. But in today’s business environment, this often doesn’t work that well.

Roughly 35% of managers have reached the Achiever stage, where one can begin to put oneself in others’ shoes. (Perspective-taking is a necessary condition for empathy, especially what is called “accurate empathy”). This development makes it clear to managers that, to be an effective leader, they need to understand where their key stakeholders are coming from, create a highly motivating vision, and secure the buy-in needed for sustained commitment.

For leaders who hang out primarily at the Expert level, their growing edge is to develop into the Achiever orientation just described. Coaches help these leaders develop a more Achiever-like perspective-taking capacity each time they ask questions like: How do you think your key stakeholders view your change initiative? What are their interests and concerns? OR What do you think makes work most exciting and satisfying for your direct reports? OR What pressures might top management be under might cause them to act the way they’ve been acting lately?

Development of perspective-taking capacity goes hand-in-hand with an increased willingness and ability to step back from being embedded in one’s own perspective. By asking these questions and giving “homework” that encourages clients to continue this kind of inquiry between sessions, coaches can help leaders cultivate perspective-taking as a leadership practice – something that will stand them in good stead, at work and beyond, for years to come.

Catalyst stage perspective-taking

Leaders now face a new challenge. The heightened pace of change and increased complexity and interdependence in today’s work environment is calling leaders to develop their perspective-taking further. At the Achiever stage we can imagine ourselves in another person’s circumstances, but we implicitly assume they would react to these circumstances as we would react. At the Catalyst level, we can imagine not only that we are in the other person’s circumstances, but also what it would be like to be the other person in these circumstances.

This is an especially important capacity for coaching clients to have in situations where they disagree with others, yet need to come to resolution for concerted action. (For a “role reversal” exercise you can use to help leaders develop this kind of perspective-taking, see pages 207-08 of Leadership Agility).

Catalyst-stage perspective-taking has other features as well: Whatever your outward differences with others, you see other people first and foremost as fellow human-beings, engendering an implicit attitude of respect, even amid significant disagreements. It’s also easier for you to see and understand the assumptions underlying your own perspective and that of others, making it easier to engage in creative, collaborative problem-solving.

Perspective-taking as part of stakeholder agility

In our work with leaders, we de-jargonize the term “perspective-taking” by calling it “stakeholder understanding.” This is a key part of what we call “stakeholder agility,” the kind of agility that enhances a leader’s work with other people. The other part of stakeholder agility is the ability to resolve differences and create alignment – something I’ll get into in another blog post. (For an overview of the other three types of agility critical for effective leadership, check out this overview of the Leadership Agility model).

Beyond stage to “level of leadership agility”

One thing we’ve found repeatedly through years of experience, applying this ”vertical development” approach to coaching and leadership development: A leader may be at a particular stage in terms of their ability to reflect while away from an “action environment” (for example, sitting with a coach). However, such a leader may or may not be putting that capacity into action in any consistent manner. This may, in fact, be their current growing edge.

When a leader does put their stage consistently into action (say, the Catalyst stage), we say that person operates at the Catalyst “level of leadership agility.” Approximately 10% of managers are at the Catalyst stage, or beyond, but only about 6% act consistently at the Catalyst level of agility.

This is why we developed the Leadership Agility 360. We wanted something that would not only assess a leader’s cognitive and emotional capacities (stage), but also the extent to which they put these capacities into action. Only a 360 can assess behavior, so we designed a different kind of 360, one that can assess agility levels, described as stage-based behavioral responses to key leadership challenges – leading organizational change, improving team performance, and pivotal conversations. In fact, this is the only 360 feedback instrument that can assess where a leader is along the spectrum of levels of leadership agility.

Bill Joineris co-author of the award-winning book,Leadership Agility. He is CEO and a Principal Consultant atChangeWise, a firm with international reach that specializes in leadership consulting, coaching and training; team development; and organizational change consulting.

Follow Bill Joiner on Twitter – @leaderagility

]]>https://changewise.biz/?feed=rss2&p=30960How to Practice the Art of “Stepping Back”https://changewise.biz/?p=3091
https://changewise.biz/?p=3091#respondMon, 15 May 2017 17:38:30 +0000https://changewise.biz/?p=3091Being absorbed in our work is a good thing in many ways, better than being distracted or feeling disengaged. Getting into the flow of our daily tasks is energizing, and it helps us get our work done with a certain level of efficiency and effectiveness.

At the same time, we are so busy in our lives – going from meeting to meeting, email to email, emergency to emergency – we can easily fall into automatic reactions, lose the larger perspective, and miss opportunities to be truly proactive. An IT manager told me the other day that she was a key leader in a change initiative that was foundering, because they had not adequately engaged with the project’s stakeholders. At the time, they felt they didn’t have time for real stakeholder engagement. But plunging ahead had caused even more delay in the project and had reinforced a siloed culture and already strained relationships.

Even when leaders make an effort to secure stakeholder buy-in, they can end meetings thinking they have real commitment to support an initiative, only to be surprised later when the commitment turns out to be lukewarm. Stepping back to engage fully with stakeholders can be critical to your success.

The accelerating pace of change in the global economy directly impacts the pace of change in our workplaces. Another deep, global trend is increasing interdependence. Increasingly, to get things done these days, we need to work with various kinds of stakeholders, as in the example above. These deep trends are powerful forces that can easily “pull us out of ourselves.” Our attention can become so absorbed in reacting to the kaleidoscope of events around us that we have little left over to step back and reflect on what will work best for ourselves and others in the short and long term.

Our research for the book, Leadership Agility, found that the core capacity of highly agile leaders is the ability to step back from what they are doing on a regular basis, gain a larger perspective, then bring the attendant insights with them as they re-engage in action. As leaders grow in their capacity to step back in this way, their perspective broadens and deepens, and they become more adept at reflecting and course-correcting in the moment. (For more on levels of leadership agility, see the book or the Leadership Agility white paper).

Anyone can develop their agility (their ability to deal effectively with rapid change and interdependent relationships), but it requires regular practice. You need to practice “stepping back” from what you’re doing on a regular basis. When this kind of practice really gets going, you’ll feel more resilient and less at the whim of external events.

At ChangeWise, when we coach and consult to leaders, we help them bring about significant changes in their organization, develop highly cohesive teams, and get more out of “pivotal” business conversations. At the same time, we help them develop a more proactive, fluid practice of stepping back and re-engaging in action. In this way, they not only get important things done, they develop their own leadership agility and raise the agility level of their teams and organizations.

You can find your own way to develop a more proactive practice of stepping back to reflect on your experiences and anticipate events. Blocking bits of reflection time on your calendar can make a big difference. To mention just a few possibilities:

Some leaders find it helps to arrive at the office an extra 15 minutes early and use this time to think more strategically about their day. You can make lunch appointments with trusted confidants to help each other think through the best approach to challenging conversations. You can take 15 minutes at the end of the day to reflect in a journal.

A number of leaders have decided to reinstate a practice of taking 5-10 minutes at the end of key meetings to check in with their team about what went well and what could be changed to make future meetings more effective.

At ChangeWise, we’ve used our research on Leadership Agility to create specific tools and methodologies that help leaders, teams and organizations become more agile by practicing the art of stepping back to more consciously understand and respond to the challenges and opportunities before them.

Bill Joiner is co-author of the award-winning book, Leadership Agility. He is President and a Principal Consultant at ChangeWise, a firm with international reach that specializes in leadership consulting, coaching and training; team development; and organizational change consulting.

Follow Bill Joiner on Twitter – @leaderagility

]]>https://changewise.biz/?feed=rss2&p=30910New Leadership for New Times – Why we need to think differently about leadership developmenthttps://changewise.biz/?p=3084
https://changewise.biz/?p=3084#respondTue, 25 Apr 2017 01:22:54 +0000https://changewise.biz/?p=3084We’ve come to a point where we need to think differently about leadership development – in a way that doesn’t reject what we know and do already, but builds on it. Central to this re-think, we need to understand what’s so dramatically different about today’s turbulent business environment, and the new forms of leadership it requires. This post is about leadership agility and “vertical development.” It’s about how these two ways of thinking about leadership intersect, and how, together, they can reframe what leadership development is all about.

We all know that we need to do more to prepare our leaders for this new era of accelerating change and increasing interdependence, for this so-called VUCA world of volatility, uncertainty, change and ambiguity. All the current studies of leadership development needs around the world, conducted by survey specialists like i4cp and large firms like Deloitte, Center for Creative Leadership, DDI, McKinsey and Right Management, underscore this need. Their findings show that leadership development has come to the very forefront of talent development priorities. Many companies – and leadership development professionals – feel their LD programming isn’t producing the results their leaders really need.

Competency models – Are they giving us all we need?

What’s going on here? Leadership development has become a sophisticated profession. We know and work with the ideas that fueled the shift from “management” to “leadership” starting in the 1980s. We know the importance of identifying leadership competencies relevant to the unique demands our particular company faces. We realize that the competencies needed for different levels of management are different, so identify these as well. By ensuring that our leadership development programming lines up with these competencies, we’ve felt confident we can deliver what our company needs.

Why, then, the persistent gap between leadership development needs and results – the nagging feeling that we can do more? Partly it’s that we need to go further in linking learning and application. The move toward blended learning and more experiential forms of learning, like action learning programs and the use of coaching in leadership development programs, has definitely moved us in the right direction. We need to do more along these lines, but, beyond this, there’s an underlying issue that goes more to the core of what leadership development is all about.

This underlying issue has to do with the fact that, in the past decade or so, the world our leaders face has changed dramatically. Not only that, change is literally accelerating. As a result, the leadership mind-sets and skill-sets that were effective not so long ago are coming up against their limits. As time goes on, these limits will rapidly become more and more apparent.

For five years, I conducted an intensive research project with my colleague Stephen Josephs, which asked the question: Does today’s complex, rapidly changing environment demand a new kind of leadership? If so, what does it look like?

We discovered that leaders still need the skills that worked in the recent past. But they also need to develop a new repertoire, a whole new level of leadership, if you will. Many of us realize this, but we haven’t had a clear road map or systematic picture of what the new leadership requires. Our research focused especially on the leaders that are most effective amid these conditions. What sets them apart? What’s mindsets and skill-sets do these leaders have than other leaders have not yet developed.

The need for leadership agility

The findings are captured in our book, Leadership Agility. Here I’ll summarize some of the key insights, beginning with the one that may be the most important. What set these individual apart is that they had a higher level of “leadership agility.” (This is not “learning agility,” which can be seen as a small sub-set of leadership agility, as I’m defining it here).

In a nutshell, managers who operate at the higher levels of leadership agility needed for sustained effectiveness in a VUCA world have the ability to think and set their intentions differently. These qualitatively different internal capacities are expressed in a qualitatively different action repertoire. More specifically, these leading-edge managers exhibit four types of leadership agility: context-setting agility, stakeholder agility, creative agility, and self-leadership agility.

Stages of vertical development

The behaviors exhibited by highly agile leaders are made possible by a distinct set of cognitive and emotional capacities that can be learned and developed. Moreover, our research confirmed and elaborated on earlier studies, which showed that these capacities develop in distinct stages. Each new stage involves a significant shift in perspective, allowing a leader to operate at an entirely new level of agility. These agility levels can be assessed, and — with the right kind of training, coaching and facilitation—leaders, teams and leadership cultures can develop new levels of agility. (For an overview of the agility levels most relevant to today’s organizations, see my white paper, essentially an executive summary of the book).

The developmental stages I’ve just referenced come from a field of research called stage-development psychology, which began in the 1920s with Jean Piaget’s studies of childhood development. In the last several decades this field has exploded with new research on stages of adult development, thanks to pioneers like Bill Torbert and Susann Cook-Greuter, who built upon Jane Loevinger’s extensive work on “ego development,” and Robert Kegan, who built on earlier work by Lawrence Kohlberg. These stages are not age-related phases of adult development. They are progressive, qualitatively different levels of cognitive and emotional growth.

This body of research has received increasing attention from coaches and leadership development professionals, sometimes under the rubric of “vertical development.” The idea behind this terminology is that the vast majority of leadership development has focused on “horizontal” development. What does this mean?

Horizontal (or lateral) development means that you gain new knowledge, skills and competencies while remaining at your current developmental stage. Horizontal development allows us to use our current cognitive and emotional capacities to gain new knowledge and expand our competencies to new areas, but it does not change our developmental stage. Therefore, everything we learn is still filtered and applied using the mental models characteristic of our current stage. For example, if a manager is anchored at what I and others have called the “Expert” stage of development, the stage before true strategic thinking emerges, that manager can attend a great workshop on strategic thinking, but not really internalize and apply the learning. I believe this is one of the primary reasons that the things we want leaders to learn too often just don’t “stick.”

Our research on leadership agility shows that VUCA conditions not only require new leadership skills, but also “vertical development” – learning how to think, embody and act from the next stage of cognitive and emotional growth. A big part of the re-think we need in leadership development programming is to incorporate vertical development approaches into our leadership workshops, coaching methods, and action learning programs.

But to do so, we need a clear, practical, research-based roadmap to guide us. The Leadership Agility model comes from new research that synthesized and built upon the earlier vertical development frameworks mentioned above. It also incorporates new insights from our 5 years of in-depth study of leaders “in their natural habitat.” The new knowledge that resulted from this research gives us a more complete understanding adult developmental stages and their linkage to the new forms of leadership needed in today’s world. Most importantly, we gained a new understanding of how to facilitate development from one stage to another.

The Leadership Agility model, assessment tool, workshops, and coaching methods we’ve been using with clients approach leadership development from the inside-out (vertical development) and from the outside-in (horizontal development of new competencies), always with an emphasis on making everything highly accessible, practical, and applied for busy, results-oriented managers.

Bill Joineris co-author of the award-winning book,Leadership Agility. He is President and a Principal Consultant atChangeWise, a firm with international reach that specializes in leadership consulting, coaching and training; team development; and organizational change consulting.

Follow Bill Joiner on Twitter – @leaderagility

]]>https://changewise.biz/?feed=rss2&p=30840Do your Direct Reports Work together like a Real Team? Do they need to?https://changewise.biz/?p=2842
https://changewise.biz/?p=2842#respondSun, 04 Oct 2015 21:12:08 +0000https://changewise.biz/?p=2842

In today’s companies, groups of direct reports are often called “teams.” Yet, quite frequently, they either don’t function as true teams, or they don’t engage in the level of teamwork needed to optimize their performance. Many “teams” might be more accurately called “staffs,” implying a group that serves as an extension of the manager to whom they report.

Does your group of direct reports need to be a team? If so, what does it take to jell a group into a true team?

The Expert Team Leader Mindset

In an intensive, multi-year research project conducted by ChangeWise for the book, Leadership Agility, we found that approximately 45% of managers view their direct reports with an “Expert” mindset. This mindset, which is more tactical than strategic, carries the implicit assumption that the job of a leader is to use one’s authority and expertise to solve problems. There’s nothing wrong with having expertise, but when we identify with our expertise, we can miss the bigger picture, including the value that additional perspectives can bring.

The Expert mindset focuses primarily on discrete problems, letting the relationships between different problems fade into the background. Similarly, this mindset focuses on individual direct reports and does not give much attention to the relationships between them. With such a mindset, a manager is unlikely to examine the interdependencies between direct reports or to see his or her job as that of developing them into a true team. Instead, our research found that managers with this mindset spent most of their time with direct reports in one-on-one meetings, while their group meetings tended to focus on vertical information sharing rather than on group problem-solving.

The Achiever Team Leader Mindset

We found that about 35% of managers view their direct reports with an “Achiever” mindset, which includes the ability and inclination to think strategically and to focus not only on the performance of individual direct reports but also on the group as a whole. In other words, the Achiever mindset sees a group of direct reports as a system. That is, it sees the parts, the relationships between the parts, and the whole.

To determine the extent to which your direct reports need to operate as a team, this is the mindset you need to adopt. Why? Because the central question you need to ask to determine whether your management group needs to operate as a team is to ask yourself: To what extent are the tasks of group members interdependent? That is, in what areas do they need to coordinate, cooperate, or collaborate with other team members in order to accomplish their individual objectives and those of the group as a whole?

Interdependencies among team members are rarely all or nothing. Most of the time, in spite of the fact that each team member may be responsible for a different function, business unit, division or department, there is also a critical mass of key tasks that are interdependent. I was moved to write this post because I find that many leaders who have an Achiever mindset and may use it to think about organizational strategy, have not stepped back to identify explicitly where the interdependencies lie within their team. As a result, they may continue to lead their “team” in the “hub-and-spoke” format that is more typically used by Expert-level leaders.

Some interdependencies may exist only among certain sub-sets of your direct reports. In these cases, you can set up standing meetings of the relevant sub-groups, who can periodically report back to the team as a whole for discussion. But once you start looking, it’s very likely that you’ll find some significant, ongoing issues that would really benefit from discussions that tap the perspectives of all team members. These ongoing issues are the ones around which a real team can be developed. Once you’ve identified the key interdependencies, you can begin to build a team by structuring group meetings and agenda topics that focus on those issues that would benefit from discussion by the team as a whole.

Achiever team leaders tend to have regular team meetings with agendas that focus primarily on important strategic and operational issues. These types of meetings are grounded in a mindset that sees the core job of the team leader as one of motivating, challenging and inspiring direct reports to work together as a true team. It’s a mindset that recognizes that commitment to decisions made is greater when team members buy into the decision, because they’ve had an opportunity to express their views in a forum where there’s a real give-and-take of opinions.

To build a strong, Achiever-level team, here are two additional foundation pieces you need to put in place:

A clear team charter/purpose/mission with a set of common team objectives that are aligned with the larger strategic and organizational environment.

A clear set of practices to guide group discussion and decision-making. For example, a practice of making clear the intent each item on the agenda: Is the intent to make a decision, or is it for discussion only? Another basic practice: Making explicit whether or not a decision has been made, and what it is, then recording it.

When a manager leads their team in a manner that’s consistent with an Expert mindset (as described above), I say they are operating at the “Expert level of agility,” an early stage of leadership agility that’s really not very agile. When a manager leads their team in a manner that’s consistent with an Achiever mindset, they’re operating at the “Achiever level of agility.”

Interestingly, it’s not just the leaders who operate at different levels of agility, the teams do as well. What does this mean? It means that a team operating at the Achiever level of agility is demonstrably better at dealing with rapid change and interdependence than is a management group operating at the Expert level.

For an example of the differences between Expert and Achiever team leadership, see the story of “Carlos” (a past client) in Leadership Agility. Pages 50-52 describe the “before” picture – Carlos as an Expert team leader. Later, on pages 72-75, we see the “after” picture – where Carlos has evolved into an Achiever team leader and created a real (Achiever-level) team.

The Catalyst Team Leadership

Perhaps you’ve already “been there and done that” with Achiever-level team leadership. But you sense that there is a higher level of teamwork, agility and performance of which your team might be capable. Or maybe you have already taken decisive steps in this direction.

Our research on leadership agility confirmed that leaders and their teams can evolve further than the Achiever level. The next level is called Catalyst. We found that only about 10% of leaders have developed the Catalyst mindset, and somewhat fewer have fully put this mindset into action in leading their teams. We found that leaders and teams that can operate at the Catalyst level agility are more consistently effective in dealing with rapid change and interdependence than are those who function at earlier stages of agility.

For reasons of space, I will not describe the Catalyst level of team leadership in this post, but save it for a subsequent one. In the meantime, you can learn about this level of team leadership by reading pages 102-107 in Leadership Agility, and by reading this story about a management team in a software company.

Bill Joineris co-author of the award-winning book,Leadership Agility. He is President and resident thought leader ofChangeWise, a firm with international reach that specializes in leadership consulting, coaching and training; team development; and organizational change consulting.

Follow Bill Joiner on Twitter – @agileleader

]]>https://changewise.biz/?feed=rss2&p=28420Three Questions to Frame Change Initiativeshttps://changewise.biz/?p=2821
https://changewise.biz/?p=2821#commentsWed, 16 Sep 2015 14:31:46 +0000https://changewise.biz/?p=2821“Framing” an organizational change initiative means setting the context – clarifying fundamental questions about what the change is about and why it’s worth the time, effort and resources it will take to get from here to there. It means being clear about these issues in one’s own mind and communicating this frame to the initiative’s key stakeholders.

At the heart of a good frame for a change initiative are the answers to three key questions:

What is the need for change? What problem and/or opportunity is so compelling that it is worth investing the time and resources it will take to change the current reality?

What are the desired outcomes? What desired future state is so valuable that it is worth investing the time and resources needed to bring it about?

What is the scope of the change? What aspects of the organization will be subject to change in this initiative, and what aspects are out of scope?

None of these questions is about “how” the change will be carried out. None asks for a change plan. This will certainly be needed. However, all change plans are ultimately based on answers to these three fundamental questions. If they are not answered, there is no clear frame on the change initiative. Because the most basic underlying questions have not been articulated, the assumptions underlying them are unlikely to be examined.

The first two questions may seem like no-brainers. Yet it is remarkable how often at least one of the two is overlooked, and how often they are mixed together in a way that reduces their clarity and impact. In my experience working with change leaders, it’s the third question that’s most likely to be overlooked.

Let’s walk through a specific example: A cross-functional team of senior executives in a Fortune 100 corporation who put together a “charter” for a change initiative to increase software revenue.

The need for change:The company needed to increase revenue in order to increase shareholder value. A strategic analysis of the industry determined that one way to increase income would be by significantly increasing software revenue. However, an examination of internal operations revealed that this would require organizational changes.

The scope of the change:Based on a high-level understanding of how the different areas of the company’s software division worked together, the company’s leaders realized that a significant increase in software revenue would require organizational changes within and between sales, marketing, and product development within the company’s industry-focused business units. They were open to changes in structures, processes, roles, incentives, and goals and priorities.

The desired outcome was to increase annual software revenue by $80 million.

Of course, creating the frame is actually a bit more fluid and complex than this summary might imply. Often the answers to these questions are clarified, in part, through conversation with key stakeholders, and the questions are so interrelated that, each time one question is clarified, it sheds light on the others. And there are often a few other important questions that need to be addressed.

However, by answering these three questions the company’s top leaders set the context that was needed so that managers in the relevant organizations could come together, identify the specific changes that were needed, and make specific change recommendations to senior leaders. Because the proposed changes were made within the context of a clear high-level charter, all recommendations were improved and implemented within 90 days.

It’s worth noting that good answers to these three questions require a systems perspective. Rather than simply focusing on the sales organization, company leaders stepped back and looked at the interactive system of units that needed to work together to maximize software sales. In addition, the strategic decision to focus on software sales resulted from an examination of industry dynamics, including competitive moves and customer needs.

Our research on Leadership Agility found that, while leaders operating at the “Expert” level of leadership agility tend to dive in without fully addressing these questions, leaders who’ve developed to the subsequent “Achiever” level of agility are strategic thinkers who find it very natural to step back and clarify these questions and communicate their answers to their key stakeholders.

It is rarer to find leaders who’ve developed to the third or “Catalyst” level of agility. Like Achievers, leaders at the Catalyst level of development also clarify the strategic change questions just discussed, but they typically come at organizational change from a broader, deeper perspective that brings more focus to the “human system” that underlies and animates organizational structures and processes (e.g., the organizational culture, the working relationships between the relevant units, the interpersonal and leadership skills of those who needed to collaborate).

For an example of a successful change initiative undertaken with a Catalyst perspective, click here.

Bill Joiner is co-author of the award-winning book, Leadership Agility. He is CEO and a Principal Consultant at ChangeWise, a firm with international reach that specializes in leadership consulting, coaching and training; team development; and organizational change consulting.